How To Get Employees To Embody Your Brand

Sometimes, employees get mixed messages about how they're
expected to behave toward customers. For example, a resort that
heavily promotes itself as family-friendly charges guests $3.00
for drink refills. So when a three-year-old spills his lemonade,
the waiter has a choice: Break the brand promise to be
family-friendly -- or break the rule about charging for refills.

Problems like these arise when there's a disconnect between a
company's brand promise -- what it says it stands for -- and its
service behaviors -- what employees actually do. Gallup has found that employees across a range
of industries probably aren't prepared to embody or "behave" the
brand promise.

About four in 10 (41%) workers, for example, strongly agree with
the statement "I know what my company stands for and what makes
our brand(s) different from our competitors." And only about half
of all employees know what's expected of them at work. This
should worry business leaders because a well-defined brand
promise gives customers a unique, compelling reason to use the
brand; differentiates the business from its competitors; steers
marketing efforts; is a major component of creating a service
culture; and defines the company's services, products, and
processes.

If a rule prevents employees from embodying the brand promise or
if employees don't know how to behave to deliver on it, the
company breaks its brand promise. The consequences should
motivate leaders to clearly articulate their brand promise, teach
it to their staff, and show them how to behave it.

Teach and reinforce brand behaviors

"Behaving the brand" means the company will do whatever it takes
to deliver on its brand promise. Every product and facility
detail -- and every employee act -- must exemplify that promise,
whether it's quality, fast service, customer care, or low prices.
Employees must execute brand and service behaviors consistently,
and frequent reminders help employees understand and internalize
these behaviors.

For instance, The Ritz-Carlton's brand promise is: "The
Ritz-Carlton is a place where the genuine care and comfort of our
guests is our highest mission. We pledge to provide the finest
personal service and facilities for our guests who will always
enjoy a warm, relaxed, yet refined ambiance. The Ritz-Carlton
experience enlivens the senses, instills well-being, and fulfills
even the unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests."

To translate that promise into meaningful actions, The
Ritz-Carlton doesn't make employees guess what to do. Instead, it
tells them in its 12 Service Values, which include statements
like these:

I build strong relationships and create Ritz-Carlton guests
for life.

I am empowered to create unique, memorable and personal
experiences for our guests.

I own and immediately resolve guest problems.

I am involved in the planning of the work that affects me.

These Service Values are printed on cards, and every day,
employees in locations worldwide discuss one of them at a team
meeting. The team members talk about the Service Value, offer
examples of how they have seen it behaved or have behaved it
themselves, and strategize ways to operationalize the behavior
even more. When the 12th Service Value is
discussed, they go back to the first one. That way, everything
The Ritz-Carlton stands for is thoroughly discussed and promoted.

"We know that in order for our employees to deliver service
excellence, they must understand their purpose within the
organization," says Janet Crutchfield Souter, Ritz-Carlton senior
director of quality. "Our Service Values communicate the expected
outcomes to our Ladies and Gentlemen [Ritz-Carlton employees],
while allowing them to rely on their training and expertise to
determine the best approach to reach the outcome. Our employees
are the brand."

Align your culture to your brand

Though The Ritz-Carlton's Service Values are spelled out clearly,
individual employees' responses to specific guest problems aren't
scripted. The Service Values give employees quite a bit of leeway
for how they resolve guest problems and create experiences.
That's because worker-customer interactions are infinitely
variable, so no company can script every service behavior, though
many try.

And that's why getting employees to deliver on a brand promise is
such a challenge. Some workers simply can't do it. If your
company's brand promise is a warm and friendly atmosphere, you
can't deliver that if your employees aren't warm and friendly.
Selecting the right employees is essential to providing the right
brand service. Hiring people who can't behave the brand will doom
a service initiative.

But even talented employees will stumble if your culture isn't
aligned with your guiding principles. Everyone -- from senior
leadership to front-line employees -- needs to know those
principles and understand how they inform employee behavior. To
evaluate how well your company's brand promise aligns with its
brand or service behavior, ask:

What are the essential behaviors that reflect our brand
promise? Have we identified them and shared them with our
employees?

Do all new employees receive service behavior education as
part of our onboarding process? Do senior leaders play a
crucial role in communicating our service behaviors during
employee orientation?

Do we conduct daily or weekly meetings to share brand
behaviors and connect them to the brand promise? Could we use
huddles, celebrate personal stories, or role-play to
reinforce them?

Have we created an ongoing recognition program that
reinforces the importance of executing each service behavior?

Do we include our service behaviors in our performance
evaluations?

Carnival Cruise Lines used a similar approach to develop its
"Carnival Service Values" -- eight principles that are the
foundation of the company's 34,000 team members' behavior. "When
I joined [Carnival], the President and CEO told me we had to
evolve a more experiential service culture because times had
changed, and 'If you build it, they will come' was not a
sustainable business model," says Kevin Richeson, vice president
of shipboard human resources at Carnival.

Richeson believes that the eight values provide the foundation of
the experiential culture Carnival needs. "[The eight values]
allow each team member to be unique," Richeson says, "but they
are the thread that connects each of us to one another and the
company. They create a common language to express our shared
values and ensure alignment and a sense of purpose." Among
Carnival's eight values are:

Service Value #1: Warmly WELCOME our Guests and Team Members
to our HOME, making them feel like part of the CARNIVAL FAMILY.

Service Value #5: ANTICIPATE their needs, RESPOND rapidly and
OWN their issue until it is resolved.

Service Value #8: Include FUN in everything we do!

Building a service culture takes more than a mission
statement

Some leaders may feel that their mission statement gives
employees all the guidance they need to behave the brand. But
most mission statements are vague on service behavior specifics,
and few of them differentiate the company from its competitors.
Furthermore, too many workers don't know their company's mission
statement -- and if they do, they can't embody it in their
behavior every day.

So start with your mission statement, but take a careful, honest
look at what your company can and will do for customers. Look at
your marketing statements to understand what you're telling your
customers about your brand. Then talk about those things
companywide to help employees connect your brand promise with
their service behaviors.

Organizations that fail to define the right brand behaviors will
fail to deliver on their brand promise. Companies need to
establish and execute brand behaviors to drive financial and
business impact. So managers should:

Create structures and mechanisms to consistently instill
brand values in the organization's culture.

Discuss brand behaviors daily.

Be a role model, and demonstrate brand behaviors every day.

Recognize individuals who demonstrate brand behaviors.

Hold employees accountable for exhibiting brand behaviors.

Companies that do this stand to gain customer and employee
engagement, trust, and revenue. They can help employees know
what's expected of them, and they can keep the promise they make
to their customers every day.